A while ago I copied a proposal by Lert on the NA forum. He made a proposal for HNLMS De Ruyter as well, arguably the most (in)famous Dutch ship that would be suitable for the timeframe of WoWs, and so I copied it here as well. So again, credits go to Lert since he did all the work and I merely copy-paste it to EU.
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Ok, some real talk. Although I would love for an actual Dutch nation to be in the game, chances of that happening are slim. Especially a cruiser line, which we just plain can't fill without resorting to a lot of theoretical designs, never-builts. This limits us to either a cameo or two in a pan-european cruiser tree, or a few premium ships. In this thread I would hope to present my argument for inclusion of the famous unique light cruiser de Ruyter as tier 4 premium, though with minimal tweaks she could just as easily work as a tier 4 in a pan-european cruiser tree.
So without further ado,
HNLMS de Ruyter
In the 1930s the Dutch government saw the need for a new cruiser to supplement the aging Java class cruisers operating around Indonesia, which was at the time a Dutch colony. The theory was that with three cruisers operating in the area, we could guarantee two at sea, even if a third was in for repairs or service. However, the Netherlands was suffering a great depression at the time, and a very strong pacifistic movement further complicated matters. As such, one heavily restricted 'flotilla leader' was planned and finally authorized. The designers were held back by lack of funds as well as political pressure, and the resulting ship was under-powered, under-armored and under-gunned, due to extreme cost-saving measures and pacifist pressure.
She was laid down at Wilton-Fijenoord dockyards at Schiedam on September 16th, 1933 and commissioned on October 3rd, 1936. She served the war in the Netherlands East Indies, now Indonesia, in fruitless attempts to thwart Japanese invasion. Invariably finding herself outmatched, she still fought for what she was worth, showing Dutch fighting spirit. She fought in the battle of the Bali Sea, where an air attack damaged her, but she survived. She also survived the battle of Badung Strait, and entered the battle of Java Sea as flagship, under Admiral Karel Doorman's command. It was here she found her demise. She was hit by a Long Lance torpedo from the Myoukou class Hagurowhich caused a fire and a flooding, and shorted out her electrical systems. Due to the lack of electricity, damage control efforts were severely hampered and the crew was unable to stop the fire and the flooding.
De Ruyter sank the next morning at 2:30 AM, with the loss of 345 men out of 435 crew, including Admiral Doorman and Captain Lacomblé.
Luitenant ter Zee Eugène Lacomblé.
Schout-bij-Nacht Karel Willem Frederik Marie Doorman.
Her wreck was discovered in December 2002 and declared a war grave. However, in 2016 it was discovered that illegal salvage had led to the complete disappearance of de Ruyter, along with the wreck of the light cruiser Java and much of the Admiralen class destroyer Kortenaer.
But how would she work in game?
Tonnage:
7822 ton full load.
This would give us 24400 hit points. This puts us slightly ahead of Phoenix, with her 24000 hit points and slightly behind Svietlana with her 24600 hit points. Nothing remarkable here, just a tier appropriate chunk of hit points.
Armor:
De Ruyter would be very soft indeed. Boasting only a 50mm armor belt with 13mm weather deck, 6mm splinter deck and 30mm citadel deck, with a 30mm bulkhead between the outer hull and the machinery space. The turrets also had 30mm of armor. This armor profile wouldn't stop anything substantial, and with an above water citadel she'd be very prone to instant deletions from battleships, cruisers and defecating seagulls.
Main armament:
De Ruyter saying 'hello'.
7x 150mm /50 Mk 9 & 10.
These are Bofors designed guns built under license at Wilton-Fijenoord. The ship carried seven of these guns in four turrets, two twins superfiring aft and a single superfiring a twin, afore.
Single mount superfiring a twin.
These guns aren't in the game yet but we have most of the data about their performance, and what we don't have we can estimate by looking at similar mounts on ships that are in the game. To start with these were fairly slow firing guns, with a cited rate of fire of between 5 and 6 rounds per minute. If we go by best case scenario we get a 10 second reload cycle per barrel. They fired a 46kg projectile at 900 meters per second. Unfortunately I don't have any data on the bursting charge carried by these shells, but if we look at very similar guns firing very similar weight shells, like those on Phoenix, we can make an educated guess about what damage and fire chance these shells would very likely get.
I would give de Ruyter the following numbers:
10s reload
30s traverse time
900 mps muzzle velocity
2200 HE dmg, 12% fire chance
3100 AP dmg
16.6k range
149m dispersion
This gives us a broadside DPM of 130k with AP, compared to 132.8k on Phoenix. A bit lower, but still competitive.
But will 130k DPM be enough? Phoenix is faster, better armored (yes, really) and as we will discuss later, more stealthy too. Plus, she has torpedoes. In fact, most if not all of the tier 4 cruisers have torpedoes, and competitive DPM. Except de Ruyter, which does not have torpedoes. So, no, I don't think 130k DPM with nothing else going for it will be sufficient. But how to buff de Ruyter's damage output without straying from historical gun performance?
One option would be to buff her reload. I'm not a fan of this. I'd like to stick to the historical numbers as much as I can.
Another option would be to buff her shells. Maybe inflated AP damage, like the Germans? Hmmm. Maybe. Or what about enhanced AP dynamics, like the British? If we look at the Navweaps page for these guns, it states that "Surviving ships were supplied with British-built munitions during World War II". Maybe we're on to something here.
I think it would be perfectly reasonable to say that if the ship used British ammunition, though 150mm instead of Royal Navy 152mm, it would still come from the same factories and design philosophy, to give de Ruyter's AP shells the improved ricochet angles and shorter fuse time of British cruiser AP.
5ms fuse time (compared to 33ms on normal cruiser AP)
60 ~ 75 degree ricochet angles before normalization (compared to 45 ~ 60 on normal cruiser AP)
This I think would make her unremarkable DPM easier to apply, while still giving her a fall back shell with normal performing HE. What de Ruyter lacks in armor, speed or concealment she makes up for in ease-of-use of her main guns.
Auxiliary armament:
10x 40mm Bofors
Carrying 5 dual Bofors mounts, de Ruyter sports a very impressive AA suite for her tier at 117 dpm at 3.5km. Of course this AA suite is mostly useful for self defense and though it leaves room for buffing with captain skills, this would require a fairly hefty investment of captain points. Another problem is that all five dual Bofors nests are clumped together, making them vulnerable to a single HE impact.
Maneuverability:
Top speed: 32 knots.
Not bad for a tier 4 cruiser, towards the faster side, but definitely nothing impressive either. The other cruisers at this tier are all close to this speed as well, except for outliers like Karlsruhe which manages only 27.5 knots.
As for her agility, she's a fairly standard light cruiser, comparable in size to the others. As such I would give her middling agility as well. Let's say a 610 meter turning radius with base 6.1 second rudder shift.
Concealment:
De Ruyter has a very tall and prominent mast, which is both a boon and a hindrance. It helps give her very good gun range for her tier, but also makes her very visible. For concealment I would give her:
15.4km by sea
8km by air
Consumables:
Standard T4 cruiser. Damage Control Party, Hydro Acoustic Search. For added flavor we'll add Defensive Fire. Finally, de Ruyter carried provisions for a scout plane, so we'll give her one of those as well. No option for a fighter; between five Bofors nests and DFAA she doesn't need the additional AA DPS.
Upgrade slots:
Standard Tier 4, two slots, up to the 250k credit option.
Play style:
She wants to stay at the rear, where her bad concealment and worse armor are less of an issue. Modern fire control and a tall mast give her the range to reach out and touch someone. A potent AA suite, the DFAA consumable and Hydro give her the tools to function as fleet escort and support ship, and the combination of HE for at range and enhanced AP for close by helps her to damage at any range. She'll play like a the love child of Phoenix and Danae, being a squishy support cruiser with tools to help her do her job for the team. It's only her lack of torpedoes and mediocre ballistics that makes her stand out from the pack, but the enhanced AP helps off-set those drawbacks.
Elephant in the room:
I know many people want her at T5, but she simply doesn't have the legs, armor or DPM to be competitive at that high a tier. Omaha for example is faster, more heavily armored (yes, really), has more barrels to a broadside, faster reload and torpedoes. In fact, I was appalled to do the numbers on de Ruyter's guns and realized that, lacking torpedoes, I had to do something to enhance her gunnery to make her competitive at tier 4. Enhanced British AP is my choice, based purely on a throwaway line on the navweaps page about her weapons.
De Ruyter under construction
So, in short:
Pros:
Historical pedigree
Powerful AA suite
Plane
Lots of design blueprints available (see gahetna link in sources)
uhm ...
Fast ... ish?
Cons:
AA is all mid range
Bofors nests all clustered together
Softer than a wet newspaper
Uninspiring design, underpowered for her vintage
Low tier (Limited public interest, low return on investment for modeling a whole new ship)
Dutch nation not in game / limited captain training appeal
What would she cost, if implemented at T4?
$13 USD, for the ship and the slot.
What camouflage would she wear?
Best I can find out, this is what she was wearing when she was sunk:
The camouflage would have the normal T4 premium camouflage bonuses:
-3% detectability by sea
+4% dispersion of incoming shells
-10% cost of post-battle service
+50% to XP
At the end of this thread, de Ruyter waves goodbye as she sails away.
In closing:
Though I think it very likely that we'll eventually see her in the game, I'd rather they pick any other of a large selection of Dutch ships. While I fully acknowledge de Ruyter's place in history, she's just not a very interesting ship to me, design wise. A squishy, highly visible light cruiser with middling DPM, seen it before. Plus, I think she looks a bit clumsy with that straight bow and gigantic, prominent tower. That said, I won't complain if / when we do get her and I'd be first in line to buy her.
I want to thank @LittleWhiteMouse for helping me nail down some of the intricacies of this proposal, @snowyskies for his help in finding detailed plans, and @fr05ty for his help with formulas and crunching numbers.
.....
Odd, their @ mentions don't want to work for some reason.
Sources used:
@Pigeon_of_War
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End quote.
Again, not my idea, but an idea by NA user Lert, who gave me permission to post it here.
Like with the Witte de With proposal I'm all in for this idea. This might be a less unique ship compared to the destroyer, but she might be easier to balance. On top of that, she's a well-known ship that was built in real life ánd saw action, and that is something that can't be said from a lot of recent additions to the game.

It was only a matter of time before Lert would write an article about one of the two Dutch cruisers that fought and were lost in the Battle of the Java Sea. Again all credits go to him, I merely copy-paste it with his permission to the EU forum.
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With the recent announcement of a pan-european nation in the game, I thought it time to introduce another candidate for inclusion. This time, the Java class of Light cruisers.
Java herself, in 1921
In the early 1910s, the Dutch navy recognized a need to construct several new, up to date, light cruisers to patrol the Pacific ocean, near what was then the Dutch Indies. To this end, the Java class was designed by Germaniawerft in Kiel, Germany, to a design mandate that specified a ship potent enough to take on and out class the then recent Japanese Chikuma class. Three ships of a powerful, modern design were ordered. The first two ships designed and laid down in the Netherlands, a third and slightly larger version - to be named Celebes - was canceled before being laid down. Materials gathered for the construction of Celebes were later used in the construction of de Ruyter.
However, though modern and powerful when they were designed, there were several delays that pushed back their commissioning, and by the time the two ships of the Java class that were completed entered service they were outdated. These ships were:
HNLMS Java, laid down May 1916, commissioned May 1925, sunk February 1942
HNLMS Sumatra, laid down July 1916, commissioned May 1926, scuttled June 1944
After completion, Java herself sailed from the Netherlands to the Dutch Indies and arrived at Tanjung Priok on December 7th, 1925. She spent most of the years up to WWII patrolling the region, appearing at fleet events and fulfilling general PR functions. She appeared at fleet days in Surabaya, Tanjung Priok and Singapore. In 1937, during the Spanish civil war she undertook convoy escort duties in the straight of Gibraltar. In 1938 she collided with the Admiralenclass destroyer Piet Hein and underwent repairs in Surabaya. During WWII she performed escort duties in conjunction with British forces. She took part in the battle of Badung Strait which she survived unscathed, but during the Battle of the Java Sea she was hit by a torpedo from Nachi that blew off her stern, cut off her electrics and caused major flooding and damage. Fifteen minutes after the torpedo struck she sank, with 512 out of 526 crew not surviving the sinking.
Sumatra meanwhile deployed to Shanghai to attend to the rising tensions between Nationalists and Communists, in 1927. A landing party of 140 men from the ship took up position in Shanghai's business quarter. Afterwards, Sumatra returned to Surabaya in the Dutch East Indies on 12 May 1927. During an unspecified event one of her turbines was damaged, and she spent some time in Surabaya undergoing a refit and repair before returning to duty in 1930. However, a fire in a boiler room during post-refit trials saw her return to Surabaya for further repairs. Later refits saw her four 75mm AA guns replaced by six 40mm ones. She spent the rest of the pre-war years accompanying Java on various PR duties, until sailing for the Netherlands in 1939, just before the war broke out.
It was during WWII that Sumatra met her fate, though she survived longer than her ill-fated sister did. At the outbreak of war she sailed to England along with other remnants of the Dutch fleet still in national waters. There she was outfitted with a degaussing cable to help protect her against magnetic mines. She spent the early years of the war waiting for an extensive refit that never materialized, and in 1942 sailed for Ceylon, being capable of only 15 knots. Later in that same year she made her way back to Portsmouth where she was laid up. Problems with her propulsion prevented her from fulfilling front line duties. In 1944 Sumatra was scuttled off the coast of Normandy, and her 150mm guns were used to replace old, worn guns on Flores class gunboats.
HNLMS Sumatra sunk as block ship.
So what would these ships look like in game? For purposes of this thread I will treat them like tier 3 light cruisers.
Tonnage:
8087 tons full load.
This gives us 24.900 hit points rounded. A sizable chunk for tier 3, putting her ahead of most of her competition apart from St Louis, who still has just shy of 5.000 hit points on her.
Armor:
Though this image shows the armor profile, it lacks the thickness values. For those, we look to Wikipedia, which gives us the following numbers:
75mm belt
25 to 50mm deck
125mm conning tower
100mm shields
Where I assume 'shields' means gun shields, for her main armament. Some values are not mentioned, like any upper belt, or the values of her turtleback armor. However, if we look at the design for de Ruyter, we find values of 13mm for the weather deck and 30mm for the turtleback. I find these values completely reasonable for use in Java. Finally, as a tier 3 light cruiser, she would have 6mm fore- and aft end plating.
This is a very soft armor profile, typical of the tier. Her turtleback would give her a small measure of longevity against cruiser AP, but with an above water citadel she would not be very survivable. Only at close-ish range and against cruiser level AP would her armor profile give her a small measure of resilience. For the rest, fairly typical of the type and tier.
Main armament:
10x Bofors 150mm /50
These are nominally the same guns as found on de Ruyter. However, they use an older mount and are listed with a slightly lower rate of fire of 5rpm, for a 12 second reload. Plus, despite the fact that 10x 150mm sounds pretty potent, the layout of the guns - two superfiring afore, two superfiring aft, six in wing mounts, three a side - means that she could only bring 7 to bear to a broadside.
If we take de Ruyter's values for damage and fire chance and account for the general build of the ship, including the height of the main fire director, we get the following values:
12s reload
22.5s traverse time
900 mps muzzle velocity
2200 HE dmg, 12% fire chance
3100 AP dmg
12.5km range
119m dispersion
77.000 broadside HE DPM
108.500 broadside AP DPM
These are low DPM numbers for tier 3 light cruisers, barely keeping pace with those found on Tenryu, which has torpedoes to supplement her gunnery. However, if we think back to de Ruyter, I gave her improved autobounce angles and a shorter fuse time to increase the effectiveness of her gunnery, based on the fact that she carried British made shells. I believe that it wouldn't be out of place to implement the same values here. After all, they use essentially the same gun, with the same shells. As far as I know, Java and Sumatra also used British made 150mm shells during the second world war.
5ms fuse time (compared to 33ms on normal cruiser AP)
60 ~ 75 degree ricochet angles before normalization (compared to 45 ~ 60 on normal cruiser AP)
This I believe would give her AP a nudge in efficiency, allowing Java to make herself count despite a relatively low DPM.
Auxilliary armament:
8x Bofors 40mm for 61 dps at 3.5km
8x .50 M2 MG for 30 dps at 1.2km
Java received 8x Bofors 40mm during her service, Sumatra 6x. As far as I can tell, both ships carried eight Browning .50. This is a very decent AA suite for tier 3, mostly owing to the ships being in service during WWII while tiered to fight WWI ships.
Maneuverability:
31 knots
These ships managed 31 knots out of their triple shaft, 73.000 shp drive train. Being larger and considerably heavier than, say, Tenryu class cruisers, I would give them more sluggish agility than their Japanese tier-mates:
580m turn radius
56s rudder shift
Concealment:
A fairly large cruiser for her tier, this would show in her concealment.
9.5km by sea
5.4km by air
Consumables:
Standard tier 3 cruiser Damage Control Party. Nothing else really needed. The historical ship carried planes, but as far as I know, no steam catapult was carried. Instead the planes were lifted overboard and took off from the water. I don't think a plane consumable is needed at the tier, so I wouldn't give Java one.
Upgrade slots:
Tier 3 standard, two slots, the 125k and 250k options.
Play style:
She would play like a fast, flexible light cruiser with broadside alpha rather than DPM. Every other cruiser at tier would fire faster than her, and she'd be lagging a bit in DPM causing her to lose any direct slugging match with a same tiered cruiser, thus relying on range and mobility to keep enemy fire off of her. She'd be an opportunist, staying at range and raining down shells on otherwise pre-occupied targets. Conversely she can close in and stay angled, making her turtleback armor and improved AP performance count against same tier, same type ships. Her consumables wouldn't give her an edge in any engagement. For the most part she'd offer a very straight-forward play style.
Elephant in the room:
I find it funny that in the 20 years between Java's design being finalized and de Ruyter being built, we went from an 8000-ish ton, 30-odd knot, soft, light cruiser with 7x 150mm broadside to a .... 8000-ish ton, 30-odd knot, soft, light cruiser with a 7x 150mm broadside. Realistically if you massage Java's reload to, say, 9 seconds, she'd make a better fit at tier 4 than de Ruyter would, and be more era appropriate, to boot. This really goes to show what a bad design de Ruyter really is, when a ship 20 years her senior is, in most respects, also her equal. And that's with a ship that was considered outdated when she was commissioned, like Java was.
So in short:
Pros:
More competitive design for her era than her more famous counterpart de Ruyter
Heavy broadside
Fast
Has the pedigree / tragic history
Good AA
Lots of information available on her design
Turtleback armor
Cons:
Very low tier
Not very flexible in terms of armaments
Fairly standard, offers nothing novel
Limited use as captain training ship, both due to tier and to nationality
What would she cost, if implemented at tier 3?
Peanuts. About $10 for the bare ship with port slot. Hell, make her a reward ship.
What camouflage would she wear?
Best I can find out, this is what she wore when sunk in 1942:
(click for exceedingly, obnoxiously hyoog version)
This camo would have the standard bonuses:
-3% detectability by sea
+4% dispersion incoming fire
-10% post-battle service cost
+50% XP
In closing:
Thank you for reading this, thanks to @LittleWhiteMouse for helping me nail down the format for these threads and some details for Java, @Fr05ty for helping me nail down statistics and @Snowyskies for helping me find design schematics.
Sources used:
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Maybe not the most interesting ship because of her tier, but it's one of the better known Dutch ships. Besides, she saw action and that's something we don't always see with new releases.

I am currently looking for a clan to play lots of clan battles with.
I have CB experience and am looking to improve my gameplay. I expect a similar attitude and skill.
https://wows-numbers.com/player/510708905,Golgaphail/?
I will be active most evenings and would like to play lots of Clan battles!
Discord as a voice com is a plus ;)

Hi all
Out of interest what are peoples view's on ship numbers in game. i.e. do you think 5 BB's, 5 DD's and 2 cruisers per team is acceptable?
My own opinion is that this kind of MM seems unbalanced........
What do you all think?

So, the preview stats for the Cleveland replacement Dallas have been posted:
Before I go forward with my thoughts let's get something out of my head, something that has followed me since the name for the ship was chosen:
Looking at both cruisers I can see that the guns remained the same, with Dallas having only 2 less with 2x2 2x3 turrets. I thought the ship would have 4x2 like in the study plans that were done on the Omaha.
The range is better than on the Cleveland, but the RoF is much worse. In fact it has a reload only 1s better than the 203mm Aoba, with only 1 gun more than the much faster firing Budyonny/La Galissonniere.
The AA of Dallas is 50/68/46 for short/medium/long range compared with Cleveland's 46/27/90. This means that the Dallas will have a better short and medium AA bubble, and a significantly weaker long range bubble. So going for an AA build will require AFT ASAP.
The secondaries are much weaker on the Dallas with only 2x2 127mm turrets, compared to this Cleveland had 6x2 127mm. Although it might be even worse as the preview stats don't have a secondaries entry for the Dallas. So either way, good bye troll secondary build.
Dallas has also much worse HP and armor, but let's not forget that the Cleveland was phenomenal in this case.
Maneuverability is better on the Dallas, but only slightly so. The concealment is much better with 11,9km compared to the Cleveland's 13,3.
Consumables worry me, as the Dallas has no access to hydro. Is it an oversight or is it deliberate? I don't know, but it's strange as both Omaha at T5 and current Cleveland have Hydro.
With these stats, assuming they will not be changed, the Dallas will become a stealthy light cruiser, with decent AA and the ability to dish out some decent damage into both DDs and BBs. It won't dominate the tier like the Cleveland did. But that's good, as it will give good ships like the Aoba and Budyonny a chance to shine.

Obviously BBs outspotting cruisers isn't anything new (as evidenced by the fact that NC has that same 11.8km detection as Conq), decided to make a list of all BBs which outspot cruisers that they can meet in their games, I mean - how many there could be, right? 39. That's how many
All the comparisons are at max concealment or those ships, so with camo (if applicable), with concealment expert skill, as well as concealment module (if applicable)